Jake's Love Story

Jake's Love Story is a Visual Novel with multiple endings.

I don't think I've ever played this rushed of a project before. The whole thing took me less than an hour to read, all 9 endings included. I did not skip a single dialogue. The game constantly timelapses to a point it gets annoying, sometimes you are prompted with 'a few days later,' you get 4-5 more one-liners from a character and you're already prompted with another 'the next day.' This game lacks content like crazy, the characters are not very interesting and there's an immersion breaking '4th wall joke' every few minutes...

The endings are super similar to one another, all of them are rushed and you feel absolutely no emotions for playing this game. This isn't a romantic or dramatic love story, it's just teenagers going to prom together because they get along well. The backgrounds are nice, but the characters art is subpar. The music is not very good either. The writing is stiff and emotionless. Honestly I did not enjoy any of it, the whole experience was pretty boring... it's just endless chitchats and empty blabbering.

Overall, a disappointing and extremely short visual novel.

Jake's Love Story is not a game, it's an e-book that's been dumped on Steam masquerading as a game. As a visual/interactive novel, this doesn't feature any notable gameplay, it's just a lot of clicking through badly written dialogue that would never have been accepted or published in print, which poses the question, "How did something this badly written end up on Steam?". When someone hoping to become an author is unable to get published in print, they spend $100 and dump their high school fan-fiction onto Steam, under the guise of a game.

This e-book was slapped together with the godawfully bad RenPy Visual Novel/E-Book construction kit, so just like no professional writing took place here, no professional game development took place either, it's just a product of filling out templates in the construction kit.

This E-book features Choose-Your-Own-Adventure elements where you make some decisions that don't do anything to change the fact this is just an E-Book. Nobody finished reading a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book and said "Boy, what a great game I just played!". Because E-books aren't games. And neither is this.

The "author" couldn't even work out a good plot for an e-book so this is just about him going to school and talking to his imaginary girlfriend/waifu. You can't make this stuff up... there's literally hundreds of e-books on Steam like this where the authors fantasize about women liking them. And as always, we must ask what value this has for us, the gamers? None! These aren't even PC games.

Visual novels/e-books are tedious at best... imagine the best novel you ever read, be that Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy or 2001: A Space Odyssey or Twilight (if you have terrible taste in literature), but then translate that to a format where the words dribble out and you have to click your mouse every time you wanted to read the next sentence, instead of just turning the pages. You'd think it was garbage.

Now imagine that experience, but with much worse writing (because if these guys could write professionally, they'd be published authors and this would be on shelves in bookstores, and they wouldn't have to pay Valve $100 to self-publish this on Steam), and you have your average Steam e-book.

One of the chief problems with failed authors polluting Steam with non-game E-books is that E-books can easily just be presented in a web browser... there's no justification for charging money on Steam for what might as well be a webpage. We don't spend thousands on buying a gaming rig to spend money on Steam for something Chrome or Firefox could do.

You can get better quality books and comics for free online or from public libraries, or from bookstores for a fraction of the price of this "game". Steam isn't a comic book store, neither is it Netflix, it's for games. Your gaming rig is not a Kindle. It's impossible for me to recommend things to PC gamers that aren't really games.

This E-Book has been translated from some other language into English... badly. If this was done through Google Translate, Google Translate should feel ashamed of itself. Regardless, the language in this game is broken and will put off a lot of gamers.

These technical defects push this E-Book below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.

The poor quality of this E-Book is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak reader number was only 6 readers. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only reader activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 100,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality E-Book is to be expected.

So, should you buy this E-Book? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam?

Jake's Love Story is relatively cheap at $3 USD, but it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the E-Book, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend. This is also competing with over 14,000 free games available on Steam, many of them far better than this paid product.

In a word, the game is amateurish. The writing is bland and has a few grammatical mistakes, with overly simple characters and a rapidfire pace that doesn't properly set the tone or mood of any given scene. Artwork is bland and seems like something you'd find on DeviantArt.

One playthrough only took me about half an hour it's so short. There's nine endings, but if they're as rushed as the one I got, I have no interest going after any of the others. If I didn't get this as a free redeem from a friend who just had a spare key he gave me, I wouldn't have bothered. Save your time and money.

Jake's Love Story is a very good visual novel game with a beautiful story. The graphics are nice and the soundtrack is Chill and relaxing... I recommend it. 💗💗💗

Two person visual novel project.

Story is your typical male-oriented high school life and romance plot. Two girls, lots of available choices and multiple different endings.

Character visuals are a little in the unpolished side and there are no CGs, and the plot is flat, blunt and short, with rather fast story and character progression.

The generic music is passable but repetitive and not memorable by any means.

Nonetheless, a good attempt by what it is basically a two person team, and is almost appropriately priced for the content it offers - best to try to get it on a sale though. 5/10

absolutely insane the twists and turn this game takes you on, when the thing happened with mike I absolutely flipped out along with all my fellas that were enjoying the game along with me, would be better with a gay option though.

I trolled the characters, which caused the main friend group to implode and I made the actual choice to say I regret nothing.

This game opened my eyes. The characters were well written and felt like human beings i felt like i was talking to real people and the music just made everything so much better. By the end of my play through i fell in love with these characters and gained feelings that i never thought i would. i wish i had the experience jake had. i 100% this game because of how amazing it was i hope that one day we see a sequel. 10/10

It's a very short high school VN. It's an OK one, in general. I enjoyed it. I like the way it makes fun of the most overused VN tropes.
When it comes to cons, I think it feels a bit disjointed, as you breeze from high school day 1 to prom in under 2h playtime, so there are a bunch of scenes that happen in quite some time separation.
Also, I believe the game was not originally created in English, and - while obviously not a problem - I spotted some weird grammar and awkward expressions here and there. But that's a very minor issue. Overall, the translation is very good.
I'd recommend the game to anyone looking for a short one evening read.

First game of this author I played. I must say it wasn't bad. Of course short, but I liked it, so no big deal. And few more endings left.
O, mogę też napisać coś po polsku. Jak na pierwszą grę, to było ok. Grozi to tym, że następne mogą być lepsze.

First of all, I'd like to address for anyone checking: Mike is not a suitor in this game, despite the apparently unintentional parts in some of the promotional material that implies otherwise. This is attempt 2 at this review, as Steam crashed and I lost my last one. This is in-depth, very major spoilers ahead.

----Part 1: THE ART----
Going against the grain of a lot of people writing reviews for this game, I was a fan of the art. It isn’t like enough to say “BEST ART EVER” obviously, but it was fine for what the game was trying to be. I like how each of the characters have several outfits, as many VNs do not include this. Sadly however, the characters do not have many expressions, and because of this many scenes suffer. (Like the scene where everyone hates you but they’re still smiling.) Also, every time they get closer to the screen I feel like they’re about to jumpscare me. Finally, the clouds moving in outdoor scenes are a really good touch.

----Part 2: THE MUSIC----
It’s stock, and it does the job. It fits each scene pretty well. Not much else to say.

----Part 3: THE PLOT AND CHARACTERS----
Since this game is a parody of VN tropes, it has a very expected story. High School with new friends, you meet two girls, one upbeat and another moody and mysterious. There is a sort of wingman character, and random school scenarios like having to tutor another character and going on a field trip.

Jake - Typical Anime Protagonist. This is even brought up by the plot. Imagine Kirito from Sword Art Online or something. That level of generic, doesn’t have much depth or anything redeemable/interesting about him.

Emma - She was clearly the developer's favorite of the two girls. She has about double the unique sprite assets as Alice. Yes, I did datamine the game to confirm this. I wanted to also check how many lines she had in comparison to Alice, but the developer obscured the source Ren’py script files, which is fair enough. She also provides a lot of the game’s fourth wall breaking jokes. Emma loves Anime and Visual Novels, and references tropes from both constantly. She is aware, to some capacity, that she is in a visual novel, and even makes jabs at the developers as well.

Alice - Typical moody vaguely tsundere girl. Her secret is that she has to wear glasses and plays guitar, both of which she hides from others and you discover by accident. I got her ending and even in that there isn’t much more to her. She’s basically a trope and nothing else.

And the last character, but certainly not least...

----Part 4: MIKE----
Now this is the point where I reveal the entire review up to now was just a lead in to this point. Mike is the type of character that Monika in DDLC deconstructed, a non-dateable character who exists mostly to move the plot along when it would be strange for the girls who can be dated to do so. However, that isn’t really what’s interesting to me about Mike. Mike is shown in the trailer on almost an equal footing to the girls, has his own page in the gallery but the gallery is mostly empty, and he has a scene which is pretty unambiguously as an aborted love confession.

This would be the part where I move on but actually we’re going into this scene some more.
Here is an exact transcript of the scene.
Jake: “So, what do you want to talk about?”
Mike: “You see.. That prom thing.”
Jake: “What about it?”
Mike: “Could you…Maybe…If you decline, it’s alright… I was just thinking that...”
-literal record scratch sound effect that’s double the volume of the rest of the game audio-
Jake: “Whoa! Wait, wait, wait! I didn’t know you were… You are not going to say you want to go with me, right?”
Mike: “WHAT? NO WAY! It was just stupid that I felt embarrassed, that’s all.”
Mike then goes onto claim that he was actually asking you to ask one of the girls to go to prom with him, which reads like one of the most boldface lies I’ve heard in my entire life. It sounds like something I would say if I was backing out of asking out my crush if he said what Jake did. Jake’s reaction to this event isn’t a great look, and muddles the intent of the scene even further.

And now it’s time for me to pull plot twist #2, because the reason I attempted to datamine the game in the first place was to see if there were any suggestions of Mike being a cut suitor or something, because it really seems that way in game. He has his own page in the CG gallery despite the fact that he isn’t a character that you can date, and 2/3 of his CGs are just you and him. Finally and most weirdly, the ending CGs follow a pattern of the person you got with being on the right side, and the two remaining characters being together on the left. In ending 9, this is the case and Mike is on the right, but it’s actually a bad ending where both girls hate you for deceiving them.

----THE FINALE----
I’m kind of sad that the source scripts aren’t included, as I wanted to make a meme about the scene where Emma pops up from the bottom of the screen in front of Alice to use the Miss Monomi’s Practice Lesson music from Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair. It really fits that scene tbh.

I am not sure what the developer was trying to say with everything about Mike, or if they meant to say anything at all. I really want to believe it was just a mistake/coincidence, because if it was on purpose it wouldn’t be a very good look. Because of this, I cannot personally in good faith give this game a thumbs up, sorry.

Typical high school romance without any of the filler. Each important decision has a lead in then consequences. Decent amount of choices. No gay option.

I didn't want to give this a thumbs down... what can you expect for 50 cents on sale, but any more than that... well. It was not much. The "story" was shallow and the art was amateur. It was kind of disappointing. There could have been a lot more to this, even if it had not been great. The story was over in like about a half hour. Each year was like 10 minutes long... how can you get any story with a full school year lasting for 10 minutes? I really can't recommend buying it for any more than 50 cents... even then, I was bummed. There are so many better stories out there, lots of them for free.

Why can't we have that "neutral" rating? I will go with a positive recommendation, because I didn't hate my time with this VN, but I'm not sure if I can actually recommend it either, even at this low price.

If I had to describe the whole experience in one word, it would be "basic". The art, the premise, dialogues, the soundtrack... It's just the most basic romance/comedy visual novel you can imagine, utterly generic and mostly predictable. Admittedly, the author put some attention to details (like some choices being referenced throughout the game) and there's the amusing possibility to be an asshole to everyone, or betraying the trust of the heroines after building it carefully with your choices. But other than that... It's just forgettable. Not really "bad", as apart from some clunky English there's nothing here to actually hate, but not a worthwhile experience either.

Unless you have no better idea what to do with $3 and two hours of your time, you can skip this one.

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I gave up this game after less that one hour. The errors in grammar and spelling were just too grinding: I couldn't cope. Maybe it bothered me more because English is not my first language either. It got way too distracting and the story was not captivating enough to make up for it. Better luck to the devs next time, when I would recommend they get a proof reader.

>Go to Alice
>Ask Alice for a walk
>Jake: Would you like to go for a walk with me?
>Alice: WHAT?!
>Alice: Urm... No, thank you...
>Alice: it's not like i don't like you but...
>Jake: I understand...
>Repeat

but otherwise pretty nice game, worth playing i guess..

TL;DR 2.5/10, only buy if you like laughing at bad movies etc.

After having this game with my name in the title recommended relentlessly to me, and seeing as it was only £2, I decided to buy it thinking "How can I go wrong? It's only £2." If only I had known.

You start up the game and it immediately hits you with a generic looking background to the title, but I've had fun with other VNs with similar backgrounds before.
The next thing that really stands out is the godawful grammar and spelling. I understand that the devs aren't native English speakers, but they should have had an English native proofread it for them, as many of the mistakes are glaring issues that should have been caught before a retail release.
The characters are so shallow that I would hesitate to even call them cliches, with only three characters with full body portraits plus the protagonist (Jake), who appears in the bottom left in the same black tee throughout. The character art is honestly some of the worst I've seen in any visual novel, with inconsistent design between the four characters, which could be forgiven if they had a range of emotions or poses to convey, but they are completely static outside of the occasional outfit change for the girls.
The story is about as generic as you can get for a high school romance visual novel, with basically no conflict outside of doing school work, and despite that I still can't understand some character motivations.
This visual novel is marketed as a parody comedy, however, I feel like the devs are confusing lampshading with comedy, as all it comes down to is the girl who likes anime remarking how much events are like anime.
The soundtrack is okay, but I'm not going to want to listen to it elsewhere, like some of the greats, and it'll probably just end up mixed up with the many other VN OSTs I know in my mind.

Overall I'd give this a 2.5/10, as much as I think this game is absolutely horrible, I can't exactly hate it, nor can I say I had no fun, as I enjoyed going for a full a-hole run. I'd say if you want to laugh at how bad something is, a la The Room, pick this game up, it's bad, but I don't regret buying it.

Very Fun VN, for the price it's pretty good. Probably one of the only Novels that I've really enjoyed in a while. Has typos that might trigger some but I try to look past that. Was pretty hooked and even Completed all the achievements, I felt somewhat complete when I finally figured out the right things to say and do.

Spoiler Ahead

But I was hoping for a harem ending as well when you ask them both to prom ;) Wink Wink

This is a nice visual novel. It has a lot of heart, choices, and comedy. I think it may be the developer's first effort, and if so it is far better than most.

(3/10) First of all I make it clear that the game itself is cheap and if you want to spend 1 or 2 hours to laugh with some friends this is fine, now if you are a fan of the visuals novels of this style or you are an amateur not I recommend it for nothing, what can be saved is the soundtrack, some background, and certain jokes referred to the cliches in anime, the bad, the characters have no personality whatsoever, they are tactless, for a cheap game I would say that the Character design is fine but they could have done better damn !. The decision making is overexploited in some parts, the title of the game is jake love story, but in the course of the game we do not see any of that, only at the end of the game magically conquests the one you like the most, has too bad endings from my point of view, of the CG we do not speak, the jokes referred to cliches of the anime also I see them something forced and repetitive, as I said before and I repeat, for the low price that it has and if you like to laugh for a while nothing else then it is yours, but if you are looking for something that lasts several hours and have better things, I recommend buying another game.

The only possible way I can explain this game's existance is that it was created by a hyper-intelligent baboon in order to spite humanity. The art is god-awful and the characters have no personality. Plus, the script's grasp of the English language is just about as firm as a toddler's. Overall, I'd only recommend this for a few laughs with friends.

The story has been good so far, it is very competent in contrast with other VN from new writers. I do recomend to check this game, give it a try.